As you may have guessed from my general habits, I went to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens on Thursday night. And let me tell you, it was awesome. The visuals were beautiful without going over the top, the characters were fantastic, the dialogue was not written by George Lucas… all in all, this was the movie we were looking for.

Now, I’m not going to spoil anything, because when else will you get to see a Star Wars movie without knowing what’s going to happen? (Once a year for the next… while.) Nor am I going to write a full review right now–I think I need to watch it at least one more time, to take the edge off some of the excitement and calibrate my critical eye. But I am going to talk about something that made me especially excited, and that’s the casting of background extras and minor characters.

Let’s go back, for a moment, to Episode IV, and take a look at the bit roles. Rebel troopers? All male. Tantive IV’s captain? Male. Imperial officers? All male. Assorted admirals? All male. Death star gunners? Also male. (You see where I’m going with this.) In short, it is assumed that if a character isn’t particularly important, they’ll probably be male.

If we compare that to Episode VII, we see an immediate difference. The first stormtrooper that we hear speak is Gwendoline Christie’s fantastically intimidating Captain Phasma, and her presence as the force’s commanding officer is a major challenge to the assumption of male as default. Later on in the film, a generic trooper reporting to Kylo Ren has a clearly female voice even if her armor isn’t signposting her gender—because in-universe, it doesn’t matter.

There are similar placements of female extras in the background throughout the film, from Imperial bridge officers to Resistance pilots. While (to quote Avatar’s Bryke) I don’t think this was “a slam-dunk victory for representation,” it’s nice to see this kind of intentionality in a film as notable as The Force Awakens. I can’t wait to see how the rest of the films handle this.

Ah, music. When combined with the various forms of storytelling, it can make or break everything. The dialogue may be cheesy, and the cinematography merely average, but take a high-quality score and none of that seems to matter. Since we’re on the Star Wars track already, may I draw your attention to the original scene versus the same scene without music? The difference is staggering.

Now that I’ve fully established just how important good music can be to entertainment, it’s time to get into the nuts and bolts of the post: the leitmotif. I once gave a speech on leitmotifs to a college Comm class, some of whom may have understood what exactly I was talking about. (More importantly, I’m a music major, so I’ve actually studied them, too. That helps.)

According to those vaunted studies of mine, the leitmotif is music given character. It is distinct from a motive (or motif) in that it does more than simply recur: it also serves as a representation of something in the work, whether that is a character, place, or concept. Leitmotifs capture that something and carry its meaning throughout the rest of the work. A discerning listener can tell what’s going on with a scene by the music within it–and, if they’re especially astute, may even be able to figure out what’s going to happen in the future.

The first mainstream use of leitmotifs was by Richard Wagner in his magnum opus, the Ring Cycle. There were different leitmotifs for all kinds of things and… well, I don’t know any of them, because most of the music I listen to isn’t Wagner. I guess that just means that I’ll have to use examples of leitmotifs that are more familiar to my target audience. Ach, alas.

In Star Wars: A New Hope, John Williams uses the leitmotif for the Force as the main theme. The version linked to at the top of the page is the most famous, since it occurs at the beginning of every Star Wars film or TV series. It, along with Darth Vader’s “Imperial March,” is iconic of the franchise as a whole. Thus, it’s one of the themes that is easiest to spot out when viewing the movies. In the title sequence, the Force theme is a triumphant brass fanfare, backed by strings and winds, that gives a grand feeling of sweeping adventure. It’s the perfect musical cue to set the stage for what’s to come.

Contrast that version with the version of the Force theme that appears in “Binary Sunset,” a bit further into the film. This time, rather than the fanfare of before, the theme is repeated in the winds section, with far more rubato. It’s slow and reflective, charged with introspective melancholy and a hint of the desert planet’s desolation. (If you’re thinking “Is he just throwing out as many analytical buzzwords as he can?” YOU’RE DARN RIGHT I AM) Yet, it is still the same theme. That’s the beauty of a leitmotif: it can serve many different purposes, tying them all together like a single golden thread of melody. (That last simile was positively Dickensian.)

The Force theme, along with several other of the series’ leitmotifs, figures prominently in “The Battle of Yavin,” the climactic soundtrack of A New Hope. It’s used to highlight the desperate struggle of the Rebel pilots diving into the face of danger, and a minor-key variation (around the 6:28 mark) draws out the menace of Darth Vader’s methodical advance. From there, sliding permutations of the theme build and build until the theme reaches peak excitement and a (literally) explosive conclusion.

Hopefully you found this to be informative and enjoyable. I’m planning on doing more musical analyses in the future, concentrating on the motifs used in other series–the pair I’m currently vacillating between are Howard Shore’s The Lord of the Rings and Hiroki Morishita’s Fire Emblem: Awakening. Until then, this is Occasionally Diverting, signing off until next week!

“Many places I have beenMany sorrows I have seenBut I don’t regretNor will I forgetAll who took that road with me”

It took me some time to drum up the motivation for this review. (Mostly, this was because I was watching the finale of The Legend of Korra, and having lots of feelings about it.) But I watched The Hobbit first, so this is the logical progression. (Also, any discussion of Korra is likely to be spoilery, so there’s that.) ON TO THE REVIEW!

The Hobbit was my favorite book when I was younger, for a number of reasons. It was the story of an ordinary person thrust into an extraordinary situation. Bilbo’s character progressed from “more like a grocer than a burglar” to de facto leader of the expedition. His growth in assertiveness, adventurousness, and all-around awesomeness (I spent absolutely ages agonizing over this alliteration) was the main thrust of the story. It wasn’t just an adventure: it was also a journey of self-discovery. As a socially inept, frequently obnoxious bookworm, Bilbo was my hero. Here was a little fellow who managed to earn the respect of his peers and become a hero.

Building up suspense in a work can be a Herculean task, no mistaking it. In order to make sure that the audience is invested in a work, the writers need to pace things deliberately, stacking plot points delicately one on top of the other to form a natural progression. A stumble at any step along the way can diminish the impact of major plot points being revealed. This means that authors must balance foreshadowing with enough false leads to prevent their intentions from being obvious.

…or, alternatively, they can state what they’re going to do outright, removing all doubt.

Telling your audience the conclusion of the story before it begins is similar to beginning a story in medias res, but more so. For a story begun in medias res, the viewer knows that the story will eventually reach the point given and then pass by. There can still be doubt about where the story goes. A foregone conclusion, on the other hand, leaves no doubt whatsoever.

Consider the work of William Shakespeare. Generally, you can tell how one of his plays is going to end simply by looking at the title. If the play’s full title is The Tragedy of Othello, Moor Of Venice, then you can tell that things are not going to end well for Othello, Moor of Venice. In some cases, though, he takes it even further. Romeo and Juliet, one of his most famous plays (and probably one of my least favorite Shakespeare plays) has a prologue that lays out the entire plot in exacting detail. To paraphrase:

“There are two families in Verona who really hate each other. They’ve started fighting again, but their children are falling in love. Both children will die. Over the next two hours we’ll show you how exactly that happened.”

Now, for Elizabethan theater this would have worked fine: the audiences didn’t exactly have the longest attention spans, and they may or may not have been missing the dialogue while the hazelnut vendors made their way through the audience like beer-sellers at a baseball game. It’s not much different now: while we’ve certainly grown more “civilized” as an audience (bathing regularly and not shouting advice to the actors, for instance) the plots of most of Shakespeare’s plays are so familiar to society as a whole after being performed, adapted, and lifted into Hollywood films a million times over. With other media, though, it can be hit-or-miss.

Let’s start with a miss. Consider Star Wars: a trilogy beloved by almost everyone, followed in production by a trilogy that nobody likes to talk about. The main reason, of course, is that in the eyes of the fans nothing could hope to compare to the Original Trilogy–The Empire Strikes Back, especially. The second reason is that the writing for the prequel films isn’t all that good (“I hate sand,” anyone?) and not even storied actors like Christopher Lee and Liam Neeson can bring brilliance to lines that don’t lend themselves to it. However, the prequel trilogy had something going against it beyond that: it had a definite destination that it needed to arrive at. Before the story even began, practically everyone who would be interested in it already knew how it would end.

Watching Episodes I, II, and III, the average viewer will already have seen the ones denoted as IV, V, and VI, so they know exactly which characters are important. “Hmm… this guy looks important, but I don’t remember hearing about him before. He’s going to die.” “Yoda’s locked in a duel to the death? Wake me up when it’s over, I know how this one ends.” “Wow, this Anakin kid sure is annoying. Wonder how long it takes him to become evil? …how much runtime is left in the film?”*

*Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating. …maybe.

With a foregone conclusion, the question is not “what?” but “how?” and the focus of the story becomes the journey rather than the destination. In Episodes I, II, and III of Star Wars, the journey was simply not enough.

On the other hand, if the journey is done well, the conclusion can be that much more powerful for knowing that it is approaching. Such is the case with Narcissu 1st & 2nd, a visual novel that I recently played and cannot recommend enough. (Seriously. It’s free on Steam. You can finish the entirety of 1st in 1-2 hours. You have no reason not to play it.)

Narcissu is the story of two patients in a hospital. In most games you would be allowed to hope for them, to believe that there was some way they could survive. In most games you would be right to do so: as a whole, the medium of video games seems to be more relentlessly optimistic than any other. Narcissu is not most games. The ending is stated plainly, clinically, at the beginning, in the same way that the characters receive the news from their doctors.

“This is the storyof a girl whose heart was standing stilland a boy whose breath was being stolen away,both of whom die.”

So then (I imagine you are wondering), if the characters know that they are going to die and you know that they are going to die, what’s the point? As previously stated, it’s the journey, not the destination, that matters. This is reflected in the thoughts of the protagonists: even as they are dying, they give themselves a goal: to reach Awaji Island and see the blooming flowers, so that they can at least have some happy memories before they die. The story, then, becomes about whether or not they will reach their destination, and how.

Narcissu is divided into eight chapters, plus a prologue, and the further in I read, the more impact that the story had on me. I’ll not reveal any specifics about the plot–as I said, after all, it’s the journey that matters–but I will say this much: despite the fact that I knew how the story would end, seeing the ending for myself still brought me to tears. That was a foregone conclusion done right.

Although spoilers are still the root of all evil, knowing how a story is going to end doesn’t necessarily make it less enjoyable. On the contrary, if a story is well-written and well-constructed, the final product will be all the more poignant for it. Share your own thoughts on the efficacy of this method in the comments below. Signing off, until next week!

Spoilers follow for: The Horse and His Boy, Inception, Fire Emblem Awakening, and the film version of The Fellowship of the Ring.

In my opinion, the beginning of any story is one of the most important parts. The tone and style of the beginning will set a precedent for the rest of the story. Subverting the expectations of the audience can be an effective tactic, but the general tactic is to use the very beginning of a story as both a high point and a hook into the rest of the story. If the audience is not sold on the opening, they are less likely to finish the story–especially in the cases of longer media such as books or video games.

For instance, one of my favorite audiobooks when I was younger was the Focus on the Family Radio Theater adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy. Those who have read the book know that it starts off fairly slowly, spending quite some time introducing the everyday life of the protagonist, Shasta, before he makes his escape with the talking horse Bree. As far as exposition goes this is fairly normal, but the audiobook adaptation wants to make very clear from the beginning that this is a story packed with action. Accordingly, the adaptation begins with a flashback which shows a child being carried away from a great battle between a nobleman and an undisclosed opponent. In addition to establishing the story as a swashbuckling epic rife with intrigue, it also foreshadows one of the major plot twists of the book, through a single, simple scene under a minute in duration.

In other cases, the scene can be taken from a later point in the work. This technique, known as in medias res (“in the middle of the story”), is used in many works, from Greek drama to modern film. A fairly recent example is the film Inception, which opens with a scene from near the end. Cobb, the protagonist, washes up on a beach and is taken into custody by uniformed soldiers. Taken before their leader Saito, he begins an explanation, which quickly segues into the actual beginning of the story. The chronological beginning provides most of the action, while showing a much younger Saito alongside an unchanged Cobb. This helps to establish the odd, dreamlike chronology of the film while also providing a precedent for the sort of action sequences that will recur throughout.

A much more dramatic version of in medias res opens up Fire Emblem: Awakening. The first chapter, titled “Premonition: Invisible Ties” shows the valiant Prince Chrom and his faithful tactician Robin locked in battle with the evil sorcerer, Validar. Those familiar with the series will recognize Validar as the main focus villain of the game: the series tradition of preceding the final boss with a conniving dark mage holds true, as usual. The real shock of the opening, however, comes after the battle is over: Robin, apparently suffering from some sort of fit, stabs and kills Chrom. Only then does the game itself start, beginning with Chrom and Robin’s original meeting and progressing from there. While this sort of revelation would likely be shocking in the context of the game as a whole, putting it in a premonition at the beginning lends even the pastoral early chapters a sense of foreboding.

As a final example, compare the film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring with its source material. There is a clear difference in how they begin. The film, lacking Tolkien’s lengthy preface to give a general idea of the world or how the Ring came to be, uses Tolkien’s myth arc as the hook to draw the audience into the movie. The film is very clear from the start that this movie is an epic fantasy: there are warring armies in shining armor dueling the forces of darkness, an epic showdown with the Dark Lord himself, and a frightening demonstration of the Ring’s corrupting influence. This handily demonstrates everything that a layman needs to know about The Lord of the Rings: it’s grand in scope, sprawling in setting, and steeped in rich backstory. Even when the scene shifts to the peaceful Shire and covers the first leg of Frodo’s journey, it is interspersed with Gandalf’s travels to Minas Tirith and Isengard to gather information about the Ring.

Tolkien himself prefers a more subtle method of storytelling: if you begin at the first chapter of the book rather than the Preface, the information is revealed gradually. Bilbo’s ownership of the Ring is hinted at rather than outright stated, told through the eyes of third-hand sources or cryptically hinted at in conversations. When Gandalf mysteriously fails to show up at the beginning of Frodo’s journey, it’s cause for curiosity but not alarm: we haven’t been told what he’s up to, and wizards are meant to be mysterious anyway. Lastly, without the establishing shots of Black Riders spurring their horses forth from evil towers or cutting down innocent gatekeepers, they remain a mystery: perhaps just a group of oddly dressed solicitors, trying to track down Mr. Baggins to inform him that he has won the Mordor Lottery.

No moral of the story or special ending message this week. I’m considering doing more posts on story structure in the future, so let me know what you think in the comments below. Until next week!

Minor spoilers follow for: Tangled, The Dark Knight, Death Note, Watchmen, The Lord of the Rings, and Attack on Titan.

Last week, while I was listening to Blumenkranz, I decided that it was high time I figured out what its lyrics actually meant. While I learned that the German was not, technically speaking, particularly accurate, there was one lyric in particular that caught my attention: “Diese Welt ist grausam, es ist traurig aber wahr.” Roughly translated it means “This world is cruel, it’s sad but true.” And that got me thinking.

One of the first rules of dramatic storytelling is that there must be some form of conflict to draw the interest of the audience. Without conflict of some kind, the story does not exist. According to Wikipedia, there are four main types of conflict; according to TV Tropes, either seven or eight. For the purposes of this post, I’ll be concentrating on the third and fourth main types of conflict, Man* vs. Nature and Man* vs. Society.

*(In the context of this blog post, Man refers to humankind as a whole rather than being a gender-specific pronoun. Please excuse the political incorrectness.)

Both of these conflict types have Man* struggling against something that must be survived or overcome: in the case of Nature, a primordial force that is natural to the world, and in the case of Society, a construct of Man* imposed upon the world. The idea of “human nature” fills both of these conflict roles quite nicely.

With that said, I’ve broken down three types of approaches to the perception of the world, with handy examples attached.

The Idealist approach is most commonly used in works directed at children. The Disney movie Tangled is a notable example. While there are, of course, villains, the implication of the setting is that humans, by nature, are inclined towards good. The best illustration of this in Tangled is the “I’ve Got A Dream” musical number, which subverts the usual idea that Beauty Equals Goodness by showing the softer sides of all of the thugs in the Snuggly Duckling. Despite their frightening appearances, all of them are ultimately eager to help Rapunzel follow her dream, and in the end they rescue Flynn despite their dislike of him. This goes sharply against Mother Gothel’s assertions from “Mother Knows Best”, where she effusively and exaggeratedly describes what a terrible place the world outside is. Of course, this being a Disney movie, it doesn’t take more than 90 minutes of runtime for Rapunzel to decide that such a view is wrong, and subsequently reject it–much to Mother Gothel’s shock and anger.

While such a revelation may seem like it would be out of place anywhere but in a children’s movie. the same revelation is used similarly at the end of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. The Joker, attempting to spice things in Gotham up and vindicate his belief that anyone can be corrupted, rigs two ferries–one filled with civilians attempting to evacuate the city, the other filled with criminals from the prison–with explosives, and gives each ferry the detonator for the other with the ultimatum that, unless one of them has destroyed the other before a certain time, he will destroy both. What follows is an affirmation of the inherent goodness of human nature. The civilian with the detonator, despite his assertions that he would feel no guilt over killing criminals to save innocent lives, is ultimately unable to force himself to take the lives of others. The audience is given a scare when an intimidating-looking prisoner threatens to forcibly take the detonator and “do what you should have [done] ten minutes ago”, but expectations are wonderfully subverted when, upon being handed the detonator, he immediately throws it out the window, removing the prisoners’ chance to save themselves at the expense of others’ lives. Even in a movie as grim-looking as The Dark Knight, the final point made is that humans, by nature, are good.

Type Two: The Cynical Approach

“This world is rotten, and those who are making it rot deserve to die.“
– Light Yagami, Death Note

This approach is the polar opposite of everything that the previous approach stood for. Here, human nature is portrayed as something ugly and frightening, and to characters in these works, belief in the world’s corruption is prevailing rather than uncommon. In Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen, the vigilantes make their disgust with the Cold War-era world quite apparent. Rorschach, the most bitterly cynical of the Watchmen, has come to the conclusion that humanity deserves to suffer for their actions. Ozymandias, the world’s most intelligent man, has a different plan. By setting up the destruction of an entire city, he hopes to intimidate the world’s superpowers into making peace with each other–peace made out of fear of a common enemy (alien invasion in the original graphic novel, Doctor Manhattan in the film adaptation). Upon learning that his plan has already been carried out, most of the Watchmen reluctantly agree to keep his secret for the sake of preserving the tenuous peace, but Rorschach refuses to submit, even when confronted by Doctor Manhattan. The confrontation culminates with Doctor Manhattan’s assertion that “I can change almost anything… but I can’t change human nature” before he kills Rorschach to keep the secret safe. The implication of this scene is a far cry from the one in The Dark Knight: it suggests that, if left to their own devices, humans will invariably choose evil.

Another notable example of the cynical approach is in the anime Death Note. Light Yagami, a brilliant and ambitious high school student, discovers a notebook–the eponymous Death Note–with supernatural powers. If he writes someone’s name in the notebook while picturing their face, they will die. Light first uses the notebook to kill criminals, but after initial doubts he very quickly decides that he will use the Death Note to re-make the world in his own image, becoming its God, and subsequently begins using the Death Note’s powers to kill the police and detectives attempting to stop his killing spree. Light’s conviction that the world was corrupt and in need of redemption was what ultimately led him down the path of a killer. In both Death Note and Watchmen, the corruption of the world is presented as a problem that needs to be solved, and the implication of both works is that moral means will simply not be sufficient.

Type Three: The Realist Approach

“There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for!”
– Sam Gamgee, The Lord of the Rings

The final approach is a much broader category, which I have dubbed “Realism” for convenience. Realist approaches to the nature of the world and humanity can be found in a variety of different works. The realist approach acknowledges that both good and evil are natural parts of the world. In Attack on Titan, the newly trained soldier cadets are thrown into a desperate defensive battle as they attempt to evacuate the civilians of Trost District. During a lull in the battle, Mikasa (one of the cadets) reflects on the cruelty of the world. Having witnessed her parents’ murder as a child, and still living under the threat of the Titans, she has an understandably dim view of the nature of the world. However, even after all that she still maintains close ties to her foster family, saying that as long as she has them, she can do anything. (Surprisingly enough, making such a remark does not immediately doom all of them to horrifically gory deaths… though it helps that one of them is the protagonist.)

The Lord of the Rings also takes a realist approach, though it is somewhat modified. In the Valar and Sauron, proof is given of the existence of both absolute Good and absolute Evil. Human nature (as well as Elven and Dwarven nature), on the other hand, is shown to be a variable thing. This is best exemplified in The Silmarillion. the collection of Tolkien’s mythos set prior to The Lord of the Rings, where the lust to gain the Silmarils causes the Elves and Men to fight with each other as often as they fight with their true enemies. This is echoed with the corruption of the Ring later on in the story. However, there is always a possibility of redemption: Boromir repents of his actions at his death, Sam stalwartly resists the Ring’s corruption despite the temptation to use its power to do good (Light Yagami could learn a thing or two from that), and even Gollum shows remorse over his actions. Not all of the commentary on morality is linked to the Ring, either. While journeying through the forest of Ithilien, Frodo and Sam run across a battle between Gondor’s rangers and a group of men traveling from the South to reinforce Sauron’s army. During the battle, one of the southerners falls near where Frodo and Sam are hidden. Sam wonders “what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace–all in a flash of thought which was quickly driven from his mind.” (The Two Towers, “Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit”) From this passage, we can see that Sam at least believes in both sides of human nature.

As I am already late in posting this, I won’t bother with a drawn-out conclusion. Hopefully this post has been food for thought, and should help you gain a greater appreciation of how various works deal with morality. Until next week!

Spoilers follow for: Star Wars, The Belgariad, The Sword of Truth, and of course the Inheritance books.

If there’s one thing that I’m willing to do, it’s give a series a chance. During my high school years, I voluntarily read the Twilight books: not because I expected to enjoy them, but simply so that I could see what the hype was about and, afterwards, be able to feel completely justified deconstructing the hype with all the condescension I could muster. Once that was done with, I never read them again.

The same goes for Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle, a series that the more forgiving side considers a waste of a perfectly acceptable map, and my less forgiving side considers a waste of time and space. As an ardent reader of fantasy novels, I’ve waded through my share of substandard material (as per Sturgeon’s Law), but I don’t think I’ve ever taken such a dislike to a book on first reading. Accordingly, I’ve decided to analyze exactly what it is that I dislike about these books.

Yes, it’s going to be one of those posts.

First to go under the sacrificial knife is the plot, summarized here in the least specific way possible. Various trope links have been added for whatever reason.

Sometime in the distant past (one might say a long time ago), an order of knights with supernatural powers were the protectors of a quite extensive territory. Thanks to this order being composed of individuals from multiple races and sovereign states, there was peace throughout this territory… at least, until one of these supernaturally-powered fellows turned evil and decided that he wished to turn the territory into an Empire under his rule. Together with his top lieutenant (another knight turned evil), the Emperor initiated a massive purge from which only two others escaped. One of them retreated to isolation in a deep forest, while the other, after dueling with the Evil Lieutenant and taking his weapon, went to a slightly less isolated farming community to hide out.

Fast-forward enough years in the future for a child to grow to young adulthood, and we are introduced to exactly one such young man, our Protagonist. He lives in a farming community with his uncle (not knowing that his father was actually Evil Lieutenant!). However, after discovering a Plot Device sent into his general area by a princess, things quickly take a turn for the worse when servants of the Evil Empire show up, kill Protagonist’s uncle, and send Protagonist on the run along with the nearby ex-magic knight, who gives him his father’s sword but not his identity, so that he can go and join the rebels against the Evil Empire and rescue the princess and–

Okay, enough of that. Enough of the plot has been established that it’s instantly recognizable as Star Wars. Or, as it turns out, Eragon. The plots are literally identical, at least until about halfway through the third book of Inheritance, where Eragon stops being Luke Skywalker and decides to kill everyone instead.

On the multiple occasions when I’ve given this rant to die-hard fans of the book, I’ve received pretty much the same response. “Of course it’s similar to Star Wars! The Hero’s Journey is an archetypal plot!” While it’s true that both Star Wars and Eragon follow the basic steps of the Hero’s Journey, so too do more complex works such as The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, Harry Potter, and The Journey To The West. The Hero’s Journey is a generalized outline that can be applied to many things. The plot of Star Wars is not.

On the other side of these sweeping generalities are the details, in which the devil lurks. While I could go on about one-handed swords five feet long, or impressive strategic moves that are anything but, there are only two details that continued to bother me: Eragon’s instant expertise at everything he puts his hand to, and the ultimate defeat of the villain. (Yes, this is the spoiler in question.)

The instant expertise is perhaps more jarring from a realistic standpoint (insofar as realism can be applied to a fantasy novel). In the space of the several weeks that Eragon spends traveling with Obi-wan Brom, he is tutored in magic, swordplay, and other useful things that The Chosen One might find interesting. Curiously, he discovers his magical power when, in a pinch, he shouts a word that Brom had said earlier in the book (which, in context, was described as swearing). Apart from the convenience of that, the mental image of someone deciding that their best chance of survival in an impossible situation is swearing loudly is always worthy of a giggle. Magic swearing. Still, magic is magic, which means that the ways of learning it can’t be related or applied to any real-life pursuit, so his quick pick-up of that gets a pass.

His mastery of swordsmanship, however, gets no such pass. I once read a study that postulated mastery of any one subject was most handily achieved by practice, practice, and more practice (thus vindicating both my mother and my piano teacher in one fell swoop). Ten thousand hours of is the most generally agreed-upon figure for such mastery to occur. The existence of magic provides an easy loophole should you be willing to take it, as demonstrated in the third book of Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth novels. The eponymous magic sword allows a true wielder, the Seeker of Truth, to draw upon its power, giving them the expertise of every single previous wielder of the sword, which makes the Seeker’s unique brand of sword-fighting into a kind of magic. Eragon’s sword, however, apart from being fancy and apparently unbreakable, has no magical powers of its own, which makes his metamorphosis from farm-boy to master duelist even more puzzling. Or stupid, depending on how charitable your inclinations are. But enough on that. The villain’s death bugged me more anyway

You see, at the climax of the fourth book, the Evil King Galbatorix has gathered together all of the Dragon Ballssoul gemseldunari from the dragons he’s killed, giving him almost unlimited magical power, as well as using the True Name of the Ancient Language to hijack magic itself so that nobody else could use it during the epic battle against the protagonists in his dark citadel. However, after events begin to go against him (since this story’s composite version of Darth Vader decided to let the True Name of magic slip), he uses a spell of unmaking (the precise wording is translated as “Be not”) to create a massive explosion in which he dies. And that’s that.

What bothers me about this is that this precise plot device had already been used in a fantasy novel that I read previously: David Eddings’ Magician’s Gambit, the third novel of The Belgariad, which was first published in 1983. At the climax of the book, the sorceror Ctuchik (don’t ask me how to pronounce it) engages in an epic battle against the protagonists in his dark citadel. However, after events begin to go against him, he uses a spell of unmaking (the precise wording is “Be not!”), which backfires and causes a massive explosion in which he dies. And that’s that.

My third argument is more of a gripe than anything else. If the name of the series is The Inheritance Cycle, that raises some interesting questions. If Inheritance is the last book of a cycle, does that mean that these events are a recurring loop? Could it be possible that, in fact, the events of Star Wars are actually the same recurring time loop, thrown forward thousands of years into the future after happening again and again and again? Could this be a stealth prequel?!?